Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Mississippi federal judges said they
will draw up a new map of congressional districts in the state,
according to a filing in federal court.

A panel of three U.S. judges in Jackson, Mississippi, gave
the parties in a lawsuit over the redistricting until Dec. 12 to
object to the court’s authority to devise a map, according to a
docket entry today.

“If the state legislature doesn’t fulfill its obligation
to redistrict, then the judges are doing what they’re charged
with doing,” Arthur Jernigan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said
in a phone interview. “I appreciate that.”

The judges also gave the parties until Dec. 12 to comment
on a redistricting proposal in a new lawsuit filed yesterday in
federal court in Jackson. That suit was brought by black voters
against state officials including Republican Governor Haley
Barbour.

Because the legislature has failed to set out new
congressional districts, “African-American voters in the state
of Mississippi have been denied equal opportunity to participate
in the political process and to elect representatives of their
choice,” according to the complaint filed yesterday.

A spokeswoman for Barbour didn’t immediately return a call
for comment on the redistricting.

New Deadline

The deadline for people to qualify as candidates for U.S.
Congress in Mississippi is Jan. 13. The primary nomination
election will be held in March.

The federal court adopted a congressional redistricting
plan in 2002. The 2010 U.S. Census uncovered shifts in
population that require a new map, according to the lawsuits.

Today’s order applies to a 2001 case that closed in 2002
with the court’s redistricting order. Barbour and the state’s
Democratic and Republican parties asked to reopen the case to
settle the latest redistricting issue. The plaintiffs include
John Robert Smith, the former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi,
and two other former mayors.

“Everybody recognizes that there has to be a new plan,”
Robert McDuff, a lawyer representing some individual Democratic
voters in Mississippi in the 2001 case, said in a phone
interview. He said the plan put forward in the new lawsuit
“certainly looks fine to me.”

Defendants in the case include the Mississippi Republican
Party Executive Committee and the Mississippi Democratic Party
Executive Committee. Lawyers for the two groups didn’t
immediately return messages for comment.

The Mississippi branch of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People sued the state this year, saying
the original redistricting maps would “dilute black voting
strength.”

The old federal case is Smith v. Clark, 01-0855, and the
new case is Buck v. Barbour, 11-0717, U.S. District Court,
Southern District of Mississippi (Jackson).